Back from Africa

I Decide to Write My Story

Gradually her niggling gets to me and more and more frequently I start playing with the idea of writing my story down. One evening I pick up a checked school notebook and a pencil and hesitantly start trying to cast my mind back nine years.

I think back to landing for the first time in Mombasa on holiday with my then-partner Marco and how the atmosphere of the place and the first impressions had a huge impact on me, as if I were coming home after a long spell away. Back then I couldn't explain it to myself and my first glimpse of Lketinga went right to my soul and overturned my whole life in a matter of seconds. One sight of him and it was as if my whole life up until then had not existed. And now I can see it, feel it, smell it all over again as if it were all happening once more, and it seems my hand starts writing of its own accord, setting all those experiences down on paper. The whole story unwinds before my inner eye like a film and I don't have to think for a second about what I'm writing: it simply writes itself!

I hardly notice the time going by and it's only when my fingers start to ache that I look up at the clock and am shocked to find it's long past midnight. ‘Oh my God, I need to get to bed. Tomorrow is another hard day at work,’ I say to myself. Quietly I slip into bed next to Napirai, who's sound asleep, but rest won't come. I keep writing away in my mind until at last I fall asleep.

The next day when I pick up my daughter after work I read my mother the first few pages I've written. She's surprised but delighted: ‘Are you going to write a book, then?’ she asks. ‘No, no. I'm just going to write it all down so that one day Napirai will understand how great her parents’ love for one another was and how nonetheless they simply couldn't manage to stay together. If anything were to happen to me, nobody else would be able to tell her her true origins.’ My mother immediately goes off to find the letters I wrote her from Africa and gives them to me to help my memory.

Back home I make dinner and see to Napirai. Then when she goes to bed at seven o'clock I quickly do my household chores and finally have the peace and time to read through the pages I wrote the day before. Before long I'm back in the past again and writing away once more almost automatically. I can see Lketinga standing there before me as I describe this tall, good-looking, incredibly exotic, almost feminine man, with his lean strong muscles and wild shining eyes. The setting sun lends a particular glow to his brown body, painted face and long red hair in tight plaits. His long thin body, dressed in nothing more than a red loincloth and a few bead necklaces, is sleek and seductive. Once again I find myself, even as I write down my recollections, seized by a powerful attraction.

All of a sudden the phone rings. Rudely dragged back to the present I pick up the receiver and answer tersely. It's Madeleine asking if she can come over with a bottle of wine to talk about something. Normally I'd be glad but right now I don't want to be hauled back to reality. Madeleine senses it and says: ‘Hey, Corinne, what's the matter? Have you got someone there? Am I interrupting?’ She makes me feel somewhat ashamed of my attitude and I tell her: ‘don't be silly, of course you can come round. I've got something to tell you too.’

A few minutes later there's a knock at the door and Madeleine slips in, heading straight through to the living room with a big smile on her face and a bottle of red wine under her arm. When she asks why I sound so distracted I go and fetch the first pages I've written and read them aloud to her. ‘It's good,’ she says, ‘really good,’ genuinely fascinated. ‘But when I think how long it's going to take you to write it all down I think we're not going to be able to meet up for so long in the evenings. But I can't wait to see how it turns out.’

Over the next couple of months things at work take a radical turn for the worse, to the extent that the ‘old’ boss resigns leaving lots of people, including me, uncertain about their futures. There's a whole different atmosphere about the place before long. One day I come in for a meeting to find the receptionist in tears. Another day I walk in on a real shouting match. There aren't as many orders coming in as there used to be and some of my customers start complaining for the first time. I keep hoping that things will pick up again, but what matters more to me now is getting back to my writing each evening, which has become a virtual addiction.

Towards the end of August I get an invitation through the post to a school reunion in October. I look forward to it hugely, wondering what's become of all my old school friends, none of whom I've seen since we all left. I'm particularly looking forward to seeing my old friend Therese.

There are already lots of people there when I arrive and I'm almost embarrassed to find that at first I hardly recognize anyone. Dressed up in my elegant black leather suit and with my bright red hair I feel exaggeratedly conspicuous. Everybody else seems to be a lot more understated. After an aperitif, we all go up to the restaurant for dinner. The table is shaped like a horseshoe so that all twenty or so people present can see each other properly. Only now do I notice a new arrival. That's Markus, a boy I remember from school who had almost the same name as my former boyfriend! Sitting next to one of our former teachers. He's the life and soul of the party cheering everybody up with his witty comments and big beaming smile, just like back at school. He's grown up to be an attractive man. Of course, I liked him way back in the third year. On the other hand, he thought I was too tall and skinny. I found out later that's why he never replied to my crazy little notes.

During the meal he keeps making provocative comments about my appearance to the teacher next to him and at one stage calls out, loud enough for all to hear: ‘Hey Corinne, if you'd looked like that years ago I'd have fancied you.’ I shoot back, ‘Well it's your own fault you didn't take the chance twenty-five years ago, when you still had it.’ A lot of people laugh at this although one or two don't get the joke.

Unfortunately my old friend Therese doesn't turn up and a few others I'd like to have seen don't show either. After dinner we end up in little groups talking to one another and laughing and drinking. Markus is the focal point for a lot of the women, unsurprisingly, as he's good looking and talks intelligently and amusingly. He runs an engineering firm now, and is married with two daughters. A proper ideal husband, I think to myself, slightly jealous of the woman who's found a man like him to share her life with. At that moment I made up my mind that my next partner would be as self-confident, good-looking and good-good-humoredas Markus. If he had said he wasn't married I would have told him I didn't believe it. But that's how people lose sight of one another. Long after the reunion night I keep talking to my girlfriends about it and meeting Markus like that.

Napirai has taken to the kindergarten and her new childminder like a duck to water. She's a lively, self-sufficient little girl and yet still very affectionate. Every night when I pick her up to take her home she throws her long arms and legs around me. She's the sunshine of my life, the only thing that matters.’

Slowly, however, I'm beginning to get fed up with work. Nothing gets done properly any more, and there's a high staff turnover. Some people have been sacked but others have just left because they can't take the atmosphere any more. I've started thinking myself about what I should do. I've been with this firm three years now and built up a good client base. I earn enough to maintain a decent standard of living and take my daughter on holiday every year.

I return to work after the Christmas holidays with a funny feeling in my stomach and an absolute lack of enthusiasm. As ever at the beginning of the new year, I drive in to the office to wish everyone a happy new year and talk over coming plans. But this time the minute I enter the building I can sense there's something wrong. The boss calls all the sales representatives to a meeting and tells them the company's in trouble, that there are going to have to be compulsory redundancies and that includes the whole of the sales force.

I'm left sitting there as if someone had slapped me round the face. This man's only been in the job for a year and already he's ruined the firm and we've all lost our jobs. I ask him how he thinks he's going to get new contracts if he doesn't have any sales representatives. Quite coolly he says he's going to deal with the big clients himself, while the smaller ones are going to have to accept the situation and come in themselves to place their orders. He makes it sound so easy. I'm quite shocked!

All the same I'm calm enough to negotiate my redundancy terms with a clear head. I suggest that the firm continues to pay my wages for the three-month notice period and I'll continue to turn up to see customers I've already arranged to meet but won't try to attract any new customers, as there's nothing worse than trying to sell something with no enthusiasm. By the end of our discussion we're both glad enough to be parting on good terms.

Nonetheless I drive home still feeling numb. I can hardly believe how quickly the firm went belly-up. Right now I don't know if I've got the guts or enthusiasm to start all over again. I feel I really need to talk it all over with someone and so decide to call by on my friend Anneliese. She's the one who's been good enough to type up my handwritten manuscript on her computer and is always impatient to get the next installment. But even after seeing her I find myself out of sorts and not knowing what to do next, so I drive over to my mother's. It's her turn to hear my sorry tale. She looks worried for me, but tries to cheer me up by saying: ‘Up until now you've been so lucky. You'll do it again. You'll soon find a new job. don't let it get you down!’

But for the first time in my life I no longer feel so sure about that and I start to feel that so far every time I build something up I get it taken away from me. Over the next few days I take work as it comes and I'm glad when a prearranged meeting falls through. I drop in to see one or two customers to say goodbye personally. A lot of them feel very let down and tell me that without me coming round to see them they won't place any more orders with the company. In the meantime, however, I start thinking about finding a new job and start studying the situations vacant adverts, but there's nothing even remotely suitable.

As a result the remainder of my notice period simply flies by and before I know it I'm unemployed. I had never thought it possible I would end up in such a situation in Switzerland. But after six years’ continuous employment I now find myself having to sign on for the dole. Going down to the unemployment office is something I find really hard. But contrary to all my expectations they treat me really courteously and kindly. They tell me I have to wait two months and then I'll be entitled to eighty per cent of my previous salary. They won't however take into account the expenses I received for my car so I'll have to pay the leasing company's charges. But I'll get by OK as long as I just cut a few corners. I'm more confident now that I'll get a job again soon, although I'm not sure just what it'll be. It does seem to be particularly bad luck that the job market has dried up at the moment. I put a new ad of my own in the paper but that turns out to be an expense that brings nothing in.

Once I've got over the initial shock however and my reaction to it, I find myself enjoying the opportunity of seeing more of Napirai. At lunchtime, I spend ages cooking something nice for the two of us and listening first-hand to all her stories of what went on at kindergarten. Previously I only heard all of this, second-hand, if at all, from her childminder. I take care, however, not to lose touch with her either and whenever I get interviews I take Napirai to stay with her as I'm still hoping to find a new job soon. But my hopes start to fade after two months on the dole and I can feel myself slipping into lethargy.

It's around this time that one of my friends gives me the address of a fortune teller. Even though I don't really believe in that sort of thing and certainly can't afford the expense, I go to see her in the hope of finding out something about what I'm going to do with my life. She turns out to be about seventy years old, living in a tiny old house, with a garden and window boxes full of gnomes. Just the sight of them makes me smirk to myself as I bend down to get through the door into a low-ceilinged living room decorated with photographs, artificial flowers and lots of other kitsch.

I sit down opposite the old lady at her kitchen table, filled with curiosity about what's going to happen next. Obviously I'm skeptical about the whole business but I tell myself I can't dismiss something I've never even tried. As I sit there laying out cards on the table, a ginger cat comes and settles itself on my lap completing the image of a witch's cottage. As I place the cards one on top of the other the old woman starts explaining what they mean. Even though I've told her nothing about myself she says she can see that I live alone with a child and that's not going to change any time soon. Well there you go, but I haven't come to find out about my love life. What I want to know is where and how I'm going to find another job.

She keeps looking up and then down at the cards and then pronounces sagely that I've led a crazy life somewhere abroad and that it's still dominating my life. She looks up at me and asks if I write a lot of letters or if there's any other way in which I'm trying to come to terms with my past. I tell her briefly that in fact at the moment I'm writing down the story of my life in Africa with my child's father. ‘So, are you going to write a book?’ ‘Yes, but I don't know if I want to publish it,’ I tell her perfectly honestly.

She listens to me but not very attentively as far as I can make out, while she shuffles the cards again and tells me to start laying some of them out again. Then all of a sudden, she bursts into life and says: ‘I can tell you one thing: you have to keep on with what you're doing and publish the book. It will be a great success, yes, even way beyond the boundaries of our little Switzerland.’ I laugh with her at this but say: ‘Maybe, maybe, but that's a long way off. What I want to know is what sort of job I can do in the immediate future?’ ‘Everything will be fine,’ she tells me, ‘just don't rush into anything. Take your time.’

Driving home I think to myself that that hasn't got me very far. She just might be right about the book, wouldn't that be nice? But I've got to finish it first. Every evening when Napirai has gone to bed and I've got time to myself, I plunge back into my memories and try to pin them down on paper. It's become a compulsion as much as a ritual. When I get home the first thing I do is call Hanni who's been reading what I write as I go along. I tell her what the fortune teller said and she thinks it's wonderful and laughs: ‘I've been telling you that for years. You wait and see — they'll end up making a film out of it.’ We both laugh at that. She says she's missed not seeing more of me, either at work or privately. The trouble is I hardly go out at all any more as I need to keep count of every franc to avoid ending up in debt.

After three months on the dole I eventually get a new job, even if I'm not absolutely sure about it. Even so it's better than queuing up every Friday at the benefit office with my unemployment certificate in my hand. It's a company that sells haircare products to big shops and chemists. Before long I realise that I have so many customers to get round that if I want to do the job properly I can hardly ever get home before seven o'clock, which means I see my daughter for an hour a day at most. I have hardly any time to eat properly, least of all at lunch and before long my mother's telling me I'm starting to look ill again. My nerves are so bad that I give up the job even before the end of the probationary period.

Apart from anything my evening writing routine is taking more out of me, not least because I feel I'm going through some of those experiences again, both physically and. psychologically. By the time I've finished writing about one of my severe bouts of illness I'm actually feeling seriously ill and run down. Then there are other occasions when I have to give up writing because I'm in floods of tears. Every now and then I actually give it a break for an evening or two to gather my strength again. It's been eight months now but I'm gradually approaching the end, even though I'm not exactly sure where the end should be.

James's most recent letter says thanks for the photos of Napirai. Mama and Lketinga were very upset when they saw them; they miss us both so much still. He encloses a picture of Lketinga's new wife. I immediately recognize her as someone who as a little girl used to come into the shop often to buy sugar or maize flour. She was very quiet and relatively inconspicuous. I'm pleased for the two of them and particularly to hear from James that Lketinga has given up alcohol completely. He says he'll send me a picture of their new baby later. It's a little girl, ten months old already. But his long letter contains bad news too. Lketinga's older brother's wife, Mama Saguna, has had a lot of health problems and has been in hospital now for three months. She can't come home until they've paid the hospital bill and on top of that they owe money to the Somalis for a makeshift ambulance service to take her from Barsaloi to Wamba. I can imagine it really must have been a matter of life and death, because a patient has to be more dead than alive before they even think of a hospital. I know from my own experience that first of all they'll try every type of traditional medicine. James says my mother-in-law has now got his brother's five children and their newborn living with her and none of them have enough to eat. James asks me once again to send some money to help them, which upsets me a lot, primarily because now that I'm unemployed I haven't even enough money to get by myself. Instead I ask my older brother and Hanspeter if they can spare some which both readily agree to.

Otherwise being unemployed again no longer bothers me so much. While I was back at work I realised that I want to try something completely new, something more demanding. At thirty-six I'm still young enough to do some further education. I spend every day poring over the newspapers for opportunities.

At the same time I'm busy getting Napirai ready for her first day at school. How time flies! Already my daughter is about to go to school and embark on the first step in the serious business of life. If she had still been living with her father's tribe, she'd probably already be out all day in the baking sun with a herd of goats. Her beautiful hair would have been shaved off with a razor blade and she'd be wearing no more than a kanga and her first necklace. No, when I think about it, I'm glad things have turned out as they have.

My mother and I go along with her proudly for her first day at school. She looks absolutely beautiful in her pretty little summer dress with her brown skin and her braided hair down to her shoulders. She opens up her brightly colored satchel and sets her pencil case on her desk to listen to the pleasant young schoolteacher, who, as a bonus, turns out to have long blond hair which has always fascinated Napirai.

Before long she hardly notices my mother and me, and we slip quietly away for an hour or so.

In the meantime I've been scribbling down my story of Africa like a madwoman. One evening I find myself recalling the time live and a half years previously when I was sitting with Napirai in the bus from Mombasa to Nairobi pleading with Lketinga to sign the piece of paper I've prepared, agreeing to let us leave the country for three weeks. All of a sudden I feel myself beginning to tremble all over and my chest constrict as if there's a huge weight pressing down on it. I can literally hear the parping of the bus horn and hear Lketinga saying in a sad doubtful voice: 7 don't know if I see you and Napirai again’ Then with a brusque couple of words he jumps off the bus and we set off. I look down at the piece of paper in my hands and see he's signed it and the tears roll down my cheeks as I stare silently at the world rushing by outside.

No sooner have I written these few lines than I have to throw the pencil and writing pad to one side and burst into tears. My whole body is shaking and wracked with sobbing. Right then I decide not to write a single line more. I wrap my arms around myself as if looking for some form of comfort and feel as if I'm being pulled down into some hole in the ground. I'm crying for my beloved Kenya, my great love and my shattered dream, for all the wonderful and terrible things I've experienced in this almost surreal world.

All of a sudden my little Napirai is standing in front of me, woken from her sleep and staring at me in shock with tears in her eyes: ‘Mama, why are you crying like that? Have you hurt yourself? You never cry!’ I lift her up on to my lap and hold her tight while I try to get my breath back, taking huge gulps of air. ‘I haven't hurt myself darling. I'm just crying because I couldn't manage to be happy with your daddy.’ ‘But you've got me,’ the child replies, sobbing herself now. I do my best to console her, stroking her back gently until she calms down again. Then I take her back to our bed and promise I won't cry again. Back in the living room I glance at the clock and am astounded to see that it's gone two a.m. That means I must have been wallowing in my own misery for the best part of three hours. I would never have imagined that writing up my African story would have such an effect. I was certain I had achieved closure on that episode in my life. But it looks as if I had only suppressed it all. I haven't cried so much in years and now gradually I feel a great calm creeping over me almost as if I'd been given a sedative.

I make the decision to get this last pad to Anneliese to be typed up as soon as possible so that at last the whole thing will be behind me. Because I've been sitting on the floor to write I ache all over, but at least I've done it! Our story is down on paper and with that reassuring thought in my mind I soon fall fast asleep. The next day my eyes are so swollen from the crying of the night before that I can hardly see to fix breakfast for Napirai. I promise her I'll cook us something nice later and by midday I'm back to my old happy self.

A few days later Anneliese brings me my ten handwritten notepads back along with a typed and printed script. Now my four years in the Kenyan bush are lying there in a file on my desk. I can hardly believe it. We drink to the possibility of it becoming a successful book and I promise her that if it gets published I'll pay for a super holiday for her. I tell the family that my ‘opus’ is complete and Eric offers to make copies for me so I can send it off to several publishing houses.